


so when the thunder comes and the storm becomes the night

by eynn



Series: i can't go back and lose it all [10]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Nobody Dies, Order 66, also the clones are all very intelligent fight me, clones with lightsabers!, sith!jedi order, uh well maybe not this time, what's better than clones?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:28:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23340226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eynn/pseuds/eynn
Summary: Captain Rex slouches in the slightly uncomfortable chair in his quarters. He’s trying to do some paperwork, help make sense of the mess they had landed in with this whole Order 66 thing, filter through the constant low-level chatter he could now hear from all the millions of his brothers inside his head, and keep working out how to make the plan to assassinate the Chancellor safer along with the rest of the captains and commanders who were now in charge of their battalions while their darjetii were safely sedated.His hand keeps drifting down to his belt, where Skywalker’s lightsaber is resting.
Relationships: CC-5052 | Bly/Aayla Secura, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Series: i can't go back and lose it all [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658362
Comments: 24
Kudos: 1001





	so when the thunder comes and the storm becomes the night

Captain Rex slouches in the slightly uncomfortable chair in his quarters. He’s trying to do some paperwork, help make sense of the mess they had landed in with this whole Order 66 thing, filter through the constant low-level chatter he could now hear from all the millions of his brothers inside his head, and keep working out how to make the plan to assassinate the Chancellor safer along with the rest of the captains and commanders who were now in charge of their battalions while their darjetii were safely sedated.

His hand keeps drifting down to his belt, where Skywalker’s lightsaber is resting.

It feels strange. He’s carried it sometimes, but never for as long as this. He’s going to give it back, of course, when they drop all their darjetii off at the Temple for safekeeping under Thire and Ponds’ watch.

It still brings home the wrongness of this all, having the lightsaber at his side for hours on end.

The plan for the Chancellor is going well. For some reason, he thinks that Order 66 has been carried out, that all their Generals and Commanders are dead by the clones’ hands. He’s been making speeches broadcast across the holonet about ‘Jedi traitors’ and ‘discovering the treason in the heart of the Republic’.

Rex can’t figure out why he thinks that, and neither can anyone else, but they’re clinging to it desperately and racing back to Coruscant while having their slicers reroute all the tracking and homing beacons they can, on both the ships and the men, to say they’re still out where they were supposed to be. Hopefully, nobody will see them coming.

The slicers that aren’t covering their tracks are analyzing those chips in their heads. Slave chips.

He supposes it was a foolish hope to think that they didn’t have them, because slaves are what they are and what the longnecks created them to be, but the illusion was nice while it held. So far they’ve found a kill switch and a sort of electroshock torture ability on the chips, and a few of them are working on a deactivation idea while the rest try to read the incredibly complex and packed data to find out what else they might be made to do.

He doesn’t want to think about it.

~

Two days into their five-day trip back to Coruscant, one of the slicers breaks into the command group chat. He sounds tired but hyper.

“Sirs. I think we have thought of a solution to taking on the Chancellor safely.”

“What is it?” Cody asks. Rex can feel all the rest of them come to attention.

“We’ve developed a prototype of a lightsaber we can easily mass-produce. Not as strong or refined as the darjetii ones, but they’ll deflect a blaster bolt and a standard lightsaber well enough. They’re about half the length, too. That’s better for us fighting together.”

“How does that help us kill the Chancellor?” Bly asks.

There’s a mental shrug from the slicer. “He’s got to either be the Sith Lord, or when we go after him, the Sith Lord will come for us. Uh. Right?”

Rex catches a wave of confusion that quickly levels out into panic and horror and realization from the others. He can’t believe they’ve forgotten about the Sith Lord pulling the strings to the war.

“Yes,” Gree says, sounding scared. “We forgot about that. Good job, brother.”

“There’s some stuff about the Sith Lord and orders on the chips. We started tinkering when we were running into walls about decoding them.”

“Do you mean that by the time we land on Coruscant, most of us could be using lightsabers?” Cody asks. He sounds rattled and rather wistful.

“Probably,” says the slicer. “We figured out how to produce a synthetic kyber crystal from materials we can recycle from the ships and the tech we already have. It’s going to deplete some of our supplies a bit until we can restock, but we think the shock value and protection of having them is worth it. But it’s up to you.”

“What color are they?”

“Uh, kind of orange-red,” comes the bewildered answer. “They flicker a bit, and look ragged. Nobody’s going to mistake them for a real lightsaber, but they work.”

“Let’s do it,” Wolffe says, and after a heartbeat, they all enthusiastically agree.

“Oh, good,” says the slicer. “We’ll send you the schematics right away.”

~

There are two lightsabers on Rex’s belt eighteen hours later. One is Anakin’s blue. The other is blood-orange, the same color as the sabers of all his brothers. The blade is short, about the length of his forearm, not the long elegant blade of the darjetti. It hisses and flickers when it’s on.

But it works.

Rex spends all the time he can training with it and with his brothers, trying their best to get used to the feel of the new weapons and how to use them while fighting all packed together in close quarters.

He misses Anakin badly. Sometimes his General makes him want to commit murder with his recklessness and his impulsiveness and his horrible way of sacrificing himself for them, but then he’ll look at him and smile, or put a hand on his shoulder at just the right time, or stand there with the lights highlighting his hair and his eyes and his –

Rex deliberately hits his head on the desk and sighs. The General is very happily married to an equally amazing person.

At least she’s safe. Fox grabbed her as soon as their first hurried mental conference was over and she’s hidden away on board on of the clone ships, ready to be taken to a safe place or taken down to the Temple when the rest of them arrive. She has her handmaidens with her to look after her, and all of Fox, Ponds, and Thire’s medics are studying how natural-borns are decanted with all the time and energy they can spare.

He remembers the last time he saw her, in her apartment in Coruscant. It had just been the two of them in the kitchen. Anakin had been sleeping still, and General Kenobi and Cody were doing something he couldn’t recall in the next room. He had gone with Senator Amidala to help her carry out food for all of them.

She’d been making tea, and had been leaning against the counter watching the water boil. He had hesitated in the doorway for a few seconds, just looking at her in the early morning light.

It had been then that he completely understood how Anakin had mistaken her for an angel.

Rex bangs his head on the desk again, trying to distract himself. He’s probably going to die in the next few days, or either of them might, or all of them might. It’s no time to be getting sentimental.

~

He goes with Wolffe and Bly and a large squad of their men to deliver all of their darjetii to the Temple when they land. They disguise them in crates to keep up the pretense that they have killed them and that Ponds and Thire are laying siege to the Temple, but when they reach the Temple grounds, it’s safe to take them out and lay them on stretchers.

Rex drags Anakin out of the crate and arranges him as comfortably as he can. He wraps his outer robe around him carefully and tucks his lightsaber into its holster at his side. They agreed to give them back their sabers now; if somehow their darjetii are in danger in the Temple and weaponless, they know they will never forgive themselves.

If Rex’s fingers linger slightly longer on his General’s than they need to as he makes him comfortable, nobody notices. They’re too busy listening to Bly anxiously haranguing the darjetii on the other side of the barrier about making sure General Secura is kept safe and her child is not endangered.

He watches Anakin float through the gap in the shield they’ve repurposed to keep their Generals in, trying to absorb every detail of his face. He knows there’s a good chance he might never see it again.

Beside him, Bly is gripping Aayla’s limp hand as tightly as he dares. He hesitates, presses a kiss to her lips and sends her through. Wolffe puts an arm around his shoulders and Rex comes to lean against his other side. Together, they watch them pass through into the echoing empty halls of the Temple.

General Windu and General Fisto are just on the other side of the gap, being held at bay by the tranquilizer guns several dozen of Ponds’ men are holding. They’ve already used them on General Yoda when he tried to rush the gap as they opened it. It’s a quarter-dose, so it won’t keep him down for long, but it did the job.

There is shock and unhappiness in their eyes, but not much anger. Rex is pathetically grateful for that. They’re also nodding reassuringly at Bly and promising to look after General Secura every time he’s forced to stop to breathe.

The weight of only one lightsaber feels strange on his belt now.

~

The plan in its final form isn’t much changed from the original. The Chancellor is paying no attention to them, or how many of them there suddenly are. He sent out an order to recall about half of them anyway, to break the 'siege' on the Temple. They swap some armor around to look like there are less battalions than there really are and pass undetected in the streets.

Rex leads his 501st to the Senate building. He sets some of them to cover the grounds and some of them to go inside and secure all the entrances and exits. He’s working with the 212th, since they have so much experience together, and with Fox’s men, since they’re actually supposed to be there.

The 212th is smaller, and they cover the exit from the Chancellor’s office into the Senate chamber. It seems excessive, but now that they suspect the Sith Lord might be involved, nothing seems too much. The Senators go easily enough into their offices when Fox announces a ‘routine security sweep’.

All the Commanders and some of their best men are going directly into the Chancellor’s office, to confront him and hopefully kill him there. If he tries to escape, all the other clones will converge on him from where they have flooded the streets and rooftops around the Senate buildings. The only other place they are now is guarding the Temple.

Thire is the only Commander missing as they form up in the hallway; he’s the one they picked to stay behind and take command of protecting their darjetii. Taking the turbolift is too much of a tactical risk, so they take the stairs, as quietly as they can.

Rex grips the hidden hilt of his lightsaber and tries to control his breathing. He feels a wave of support and steady encouragement from his brothers and tries to send them back gratitude.

Cody nudges his side with his elbow, and they glance at each other and nod.

He hears Bly whisper something he can’t make out from beneath the helmet, but he does hear Aayla’s name.

Gree and Ponds are silent.

They reach the door to the floor where the Chancellor’s office is.

Wolffe hisses, “For General Buir,” and pushes it open.

~

Rex begins to sense that something has gone wrong as they hurry towards the office. He can hear the sounds of battle already, lightsabers humming and people shouting and things or people crashing into walls.

Gree and Bly reach the final door at almost the same time and yank it open. Their sabers are already lit in their hands, and they react instinctively to the bolts that come for them, batting them away.

Rex pushes past them as they fall back and sees most of the darjetii who they left safely unconscious in the Temple not long ago (and didn’t they give them a final shot just before taking them off the ships? They should have stayed asleep much longer, and been too weak to do anything like this for days) furiously dueling the Chancellor, who is using a red Sith lightsaber with considerable skill and liberally throwing lightning at them as well.

Generals Fisto and Tiin are on the ground, bleeding impressively. General Unduli is trying to help them while General Mundi and General Windu shield the three of them from being attacked.

Knight Offee and a large Zabrak Rex doesn’t know are fighting four of the Chancellor’s nat-born guards, who have blasters and electrostaffs. General Yoda is taking on the remaining five by himself, bouncing from place to place so fast they are doing more damage to the architecture and each other than to him.

General Ti and General Kenobi are battling the Sith Lord. General Ti is snarling, her whole face contorted, and Rex can see how Togruta are predators much more clearly than he ever could with Commander Tano. She’s moving so fast her lightsaber is a blur.

General Kenobi is mostly defending her, as he generally does when teaming up with any of them. He looks deceptively calm, but his eyes are burning and whenever he brushes up against anything, sparks arc and crackle around it.

Rex takes in the room in one quick glance and moves in to help take down the guards. Even if it’s General Yoda, five on one isn’t fair to the one.

He’s managed to tag-team one of them with Bly and bring him down – they’re fast, unnaturally so, he thinks that either they are Force-sensitives or that the Chancellor has experimented on them – when he hears a howl of pain.

Cody turns from beside him and almost knocks him over as he lunges forward. Rex follows the movement to see General Ti flung across the room, almost on top of General Fisto, and General Kenobi crumpling to the ground, lightsaber dropping from his hand.

There’s the sound of a lightsaber slicing through flesh and the sound of a blaster firing, almost at the same time.


End file.
